What does leadership mean to me?

I believe leadership is about creatively harnessing innovative ideas and confidently promoting them to have people passionately join the journey for sustained success. This is just as important in the knowledge economy. The rapid adoption of newer technologies and the growing interconnectedness around the world requires a leader who can build a coordinated plan enabling an organisation to evolve alongside social, cultural, political and technological trends influencing change.

Today’s leadership must have passion as a coach and facilitator to harness the creative minds of knowledge workers to enable their organisations to adopt and integrate the newer technological innovations. It is critical that leadership transform vision into action to unlock the collective intelligence within an organisation. I believe this is a mandate that leadership must excel at. This too is part of the fiduciary responsibility of leadership and ensures an organisation becomes adaptive to all trends influencing change.

An organisation’s current and future success, more than ever, hinges on leadership that act less as command and control or authoritative. Instead, leadership who act more creatively and innovatively is what ensures organisations thwart organisational inertia. I believe it creates a disruptive force for organisations when it is combined with customer-oriented business models and a data-centric enterprise. Moreover, as knowledge is the new raw material of business – an economic input almost on a par with capital and labour – leadership that enable organisations to harness its immense insight and unlock its value will capitalise on its true value.

These aspects are examples of critical factors organisations must consider to increase their ability to make radical or incremental changes in strategy and structure in the face of rapid change. It is imperative that leadership are creative and innovative to enable organisations to thrive in a world where the only thing that is certain is change.

Additionally, I believe leadership that is inspiring, authentic, and infused with integrity ensures a vision fosters a climate where the organisations unique capabilities creates a higher degree of differentiation that is not easily imitated by competitors.

I believe leadership that is creative and innovative is no longer a useful accessory, rather it is critical if organisations want to sustain competiveness in the knowledge economy. These aspects will create a disruptive force that is difficult to imitate by competitors when they are combined with a data-centric enterprise and customer-oriented business models. In a world where change is the only thing that is certain it will be this type of leadership that will promote a vision to inspire knowledge workers to join the journey for sustained success.

The recent Ventana Research Leadership Awards recognise individuals, organisations and technology vendors worldwide that demonstrate innovation and leadership to achieve spectacular outcomes. It was an honor to accept this award on behalf of team.

Thanks to Ventana Research for recognising the leadership characteristics shown in the team. Congratulations also to all the other leadership award recipients.

Below is the link to Ventana Research's press release on the awards.

Read more: http://www.ventanaresearch.com/2011awardspr/